Story Highlights

I hate driving. Well, it's not the driving exactly. It's wasting some of the best hours of the day stuck in traffic, or driving around in circles looking for just one available parking spot. Luckily, a few new driving apps can help even the most time-crunched among us steer clear of all kinds of traffic troubles.

ParkMe is a free app for Android or iPhone that finds the closest, cheapest parking nearby, and shows you what's available in real-time. Parking prices pop up on a map, and you choose the one that looks good based on what kind of car you have, how long you want to park, and how much you want to pay. Then, the app guides you right in to the opening.

Finding a parking spot is one thing, but how about remembering where you parked and how long you have until your meter runs out? Impossible for some of us on the best of days, let alone between shuttling kids, carting groceries, running errands, manic-mom afternoons.

Honk for iPhone lets you get in sync between the actual parking meter and the app on your phone. It marks your location on a map, and lets you take photos and jot down hand-written notes. Then, it ticks down the time remaining and honks at you when it's time to head back to your car.

The Waze app totally helps you go from frustrated to fast lane. It's a cool GPS social navigation app that gives you up-to-the-second traffic information from other people who are actually out on the roads with you. It gathers information from drivers' phones, showing how fast people are going, and even lets drivers send messages about detours, slow-downs, and all kinds of other bumps in the road. Waze basically creates personal, hyper-local and custom-tailored traffic reports. The big reminder here though is to consult the app BEFORE you're actually driving. The last thing you want, or need, is for it to distract you when you need to keep your eyes on the road.

If technology could just teach people how to use their turn signals, or how to be polite to one another, now THAT would be an app worth tapping. Let's hope the great minds behind the wheel of the all the new connected-car trends are headed that direction.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. Email her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.